2013 Driver of the Weekend results

Ten different drivers were voted Driver of the Weekend during 2013. Sebastian Vettel won it six times, more than any of his rivals. Fernando Alonso took three wins and Lewis Hamilton and Nico Hulkenberg both won the poll twice.

Brazilian Grand Prix Driver of the Weekend result

Button topped the Driver of the Weekend poll for the first time this season following his rise from 14th to fourth in the Brazilian Grand Prix. This is Button’s second appearance in the top three – the other being third in Belgium.

The two Red Bull drivers also featured among your top three votes. Vettel took his ninth consecutive victory meaning he was voted in the top three 13 times this season – nine of which came in the final nine races of the season.

Webber was voted third in his final F1 race following a strong drive to finish runner-up to Vettel.

1. Jenson Button

Started: 14th
Finished: 4th

Following McLaren’s decision not to do huge amounts of running in practice Button suffered the consequences and qualified a poor 15th – that became 14th on the grid due to Perez’s penalty – having been hoping a top ten.

Button was one of only two drivers to start on the hard tyre but impressively made up five places on the opening two laps before taking more places during the first stint.

Hamilton and Massa’s penalties dully played into his hands but Button kept a cool head and drove a clean race to give McLaren their best finish of the season in fourth.

Strangely, but not many in the press talk about Button?óÔé¼Ôäós drive. It was his best race throughout whole year, just storming. Of course, his qualifying performance wasn?óÔé¼Ôäót great but he more than made for it in the race. And smaller wing angles helped here too. But those cracking moves were so enjoyable and he looked unstoppable at one moment@Osvaldas31

Button gets my vote. Sure he messed up his qualifying but to some extent that was down to McLaren not running in practice. His first stint was amazing, slicing through the field on primes and doing some brave moves on others was pretty exciting to watch. Probably the best way to end a very frustrating season.Robert Tang (@robertthespy)

Button gave us a masterclass of making the most out of what you have so he got my vote@HoHum

2. Sebastian Vettel

Started: 1st
Finished: 1st

Everyone was praying for a wet race to hopefully end Vettel’s dominance but the differing conditions only seemed to spur him on as no-one could get within half a second of the quadruple world champion in qualifying.

A poor getaway handed Rosberg the lead but Vettel easily slid down the inside at turn one on the second lap to take a lead he would never give away – despite a thirteen second stop as Red Bull mixed up their drivers’ tyres. Vettel maintained the gap back to his team mate and eased to a record ninth consecutive victory.

Sebastian Vettel is my driver of the weekend. He mastered the wet conditions on Saturday by taking pole position by a large margin. And he mastered the (almost) dry conditions on Sunday as he skilfully managed the race from the first lap until the end despite an average start. Another proof that he is a deserving multiple world champion.@Girts

Sebastian Vettel is not just the driver of the weekend, but also the driver of the year in my opinion: he?óÔé¼Ôäós fast, consistent, hardly makes mistakes and has an incredible will to win! Definetly the driver of the weekend.Barney

3. Mark Webber

Started: 4th
Finished: 2nd

Webber’s race consisted mainly of following and passing Alonso – a feat he accomplished twice – but overtakes on both the Mercedes’ as well rightly earned him a podium in his final race.

Removing his helmet for the slowing down lap was a unique way to end his career and something many fans will remember for a long time.

92 comments on “Vote for the best driver of the 2013 F1 season”

Yes, even if you split the season in 2 as you should you should see that Vettel and Red Bull managed well enough their front wear issues and managed to win in the rear limited circuits of Bahrain and Canada and they managed not to lose to many points on the front limited circuits as China or Spain and they got lucky on Malaysia qually and they capitalized on everything just spotless.

Best is still subjective.. so I put in a tactical vote for Hulkenberg. To win DOTW twice in a Sauber, and be ‘best of the rest’ in the second half of the season. Bottas won DOTW once as well, so if he gets no votes here that would be interesting – surely some people would vote for him as best rookie. Vettel obviously has this won, perhaps even more so than the 2013 WDC after the tyre change…

It would be interesting to pit the slow-car on-form Kovalainen against Vettel. Only in the Lotus and Renault did he look like the driver that won ROC over Schumacher. Obviously not the recent Lotus though.. but that was mainly circumstance. Have they raced each other at ROC?

And although my second sentence doesn’t make sense, it does if you add further factors like: is quite an achievement, alongside being the last ‘non-pay driver’ (and perhaps ‘non-paid driver’?), last guy hauling it for a seat on pure merit etc. (Di Resta is now out for a continuing Sutil, who he beat this year.. but it would have been closer without bad luck for both sides).

You could make a case for some of the rookies like Bottas as well, although they were both Williams test driver, but Hulk got a full pre-season testing schedule I imagine rather than a year of FP1s. Calado still has a chance with Force India FP1s from his RSF backing, but that is now over.. and the rest of the rookies have come in via teams’ YDT programs.

@tango – It also has to take into account what cars they were in as opposed to just popularity. Massa finished 8th in the WDC and got rated the 13th best driver overall by F1F. If he’d come 8th in a Marussia, he’d have finished higher than 13th in the F1F rankings.

If you’re a Vettel fan then why are you loosing interest in F1? DRS, crappy tyres, kers, he still finishes ahead of everyone by a mile and probably next year will happen the same but with Hamilton, if anything you should be more excited about F1 :p

@mantresx – The only person in the world who enjoys complete Vettel domination from FP1 to the chequred flag on Sundays is Sebastian Vettel.

Even Vettel fans would wish for more excitement, actual racing, decent tyres and the end of stupid rules (ie double points). The only difference is following all of that, they’d still want Vettel to come out on top. :)

Nico Rosberg summed up some of Vettel’s drives as ‘being on a different planet’, and that’s very accurate: Vettel has had an incredible and flawless season, as close to perfection as it gets. The 28% that at the time of writing decided not to vote for Vettel are quite simply wrong.

@andae23 – It’s all subjective though to be fair. I voted for Vettel but it’s very hard to say that his performance was better than Hulkenberg’s (for example). How can we compare them?

Vettel was in the fastest car and was able to get it to the first corner in the lead more times than not. Once that happened, he could drive off into the distance and relax. Hulk never had that chance because however fast he was, he would be amongst others in faster cars. When he did qualify well, he simply didn’t have the race pace to pull away from the field. If Vettel was in the Sauber, he wouldn’t have either.

Same can be said for the cars at the back – how can we really judge any of those 4 against the rest? Would it be fair to judge if Vergne had a better or worse season than Pic?

@petebaldwin Of course everyone has the right to have his/her own opinion, but Vettel was just so unbelievably good this year. I can accept that a few people think someone else did a better job, but.. 32%? I mean, really?

@andae23 – Well yeah fair enough. At least 10% of that can be taken away as votes for their favourites. Votes for Webber and Guiterrez are clearly ridiculous. Hamilton, by his own admission, didn’t have a great season. The car was capable of more than he got out of it as he struggled with the breaks and general setup. There are various drivers who got beaten by their team mates yet got votes…. In the same way, beating your team mate doesn’t mean much because your team mate may have had a 2 out of 10 season and you may have had a 6 out of 10….

@petebaldwin – fair arguments made and there is an element of truth in there.
I agree that Hulkenberg really surprised me and did things in the Sauber that were not to be expected however he also had weekends he did not perform 100%. I can’t remember a weekend where Vettel really underperformed the car, maybe not every weekend was flawless (most were) but no big mistakes either in qualifying or the race.
In Japan he was 3rd after first corner and just drove his race, faster than Webber & Grossjean and made the overtake stick when it mattered.
In India he pitted at lap 2, it took him little time to go through the midfield, not a single overtake he attempted failed.
Also it was Vettel at age 21 in a Toro Rosso in wet Monza that got pole and won the race.
Last it is my opinion that truly great drivers can create great cars like great cars can generate great drivers. Being able to lead a team, focus on your own strengths, despite winning reviewing your race in detail for areas of improvements, learn from mistakes as well as the skill to adapt to whatever situation, weather, rule change, etc.
So far all (except 1) those that have commented indicating their vote, voted Vettel, I guess those that didn’t vote either are not bothered to comment or simply could not justify their vote.

@andae23 that’s why I keep saying Keith should create a 3-2-1 points system to vote for 3 drivers every weekend. It would give a more accurate vote, and it would stop the “sorry vote” when people decide not to vote for the best “because Mr. X was almost as good as him”.

So shortly after voting started (but already with around 300 votes iIrc) Vettel was at 72%. Now with around 600 votes he is at 63% only. So the first 300 people vote significantly different from the next 300 (no need to run a statistical test, it will probably come out as significant at the 0.01% level).

Why is that? My take is that more casual visitors to the site are likely to vote later whereas the die-hard fans check F1Fanatic several times a day. And somehow the former don’t appreciate Vettel’s achievements whereas the latter do.

@mike-dee Seems like a reasonable explanation. I guess the ‘casual’ fans don’t appreciate Vettel’s achievements because they haven’t seen him do it with their own eyes. Hulkenberg and Alonso have been more visible because they weren’t 10 seconds ahead of everyone else every race, so I see why you would then be inclined to vote for one of them instead of Vettel.

But it’s still beyond me that 37% think Vettel could have done a better job.

Love him, hate him or simply……boo him, he has left no doubt in a sane F1 follower’s mind about his talent and achievement. Some argue that he had the best car but so did Mark. You need a blend of man and machine (and now-a-days TIRES) to succeed in this sport and there is no doubt that Red Bull produced a gem of a machine and Sebastian provided the efficient pair of hands and legs to dance around the circuits while laying less tire marbles.

The best driver of the season was Vettel, by miles. His level of domination post the summer break was truly staggering, in the cold hard light of day the “boo-boys” will have to admit that it was a true privilege to have watched it.

Undoubtedly the best driver of the season was Vettel. The form he showed in the second half of the season following the summer break was superlative and his general consistency throughout the season as a whole was fantastic. In seasons gone by I would have been reluctant to give Vettel the tag of “Best driver of the season”, but he certainly earned, and deserves it in 2013, no question.

Would be a better question to ask who is the second driver of the year, given that Seb is the driver of the year!!!
If the question was that, i would vote for Kimi Raikkonen! Very interisting moment at Monaco GP when he could still be hunting the Schumacher record of consecutive points, and he always went to the limit of those pirellis and mades mart strategies as well!

It’s a very easy decision – Vettel of course. I have faith in F1Fanatic members that he’ll dominate this vote, because I’ve seen Raikkonen win a driver of the year poll somewhere else recently – madness!

I’m surprised Max Chilton is still on 0%, he seems to always get 1% at least in driver of the weekend polls.

While the last 7 is the same, its seems that the Lotus had better drivers who could get the maximum performance of the car than Red Bull and Ferrari. Not surprising but shows Webber and Massa really underperformed this year.

@kingshark
True but if you look at performace of the Mercedes drivers, they neither improved their performance nor did their performance drop. Lotus on the other hand had Kimi over acheiving in the first half and Romain doing the same in the second half. So if you see from the teams point on view, they had atleast 1 car getting its maximum each half of the season.

I found no excuse for not voting for SV, he was just simply sublime. He won almost everything and no one even came close.
Slightly controversial, but I’m sure if he were in a car next to senna Schumacher or any of the other greats he’d be just as good.

I would agree with that too. People say he needs to race for a different team or a with a better teammate to show how strong he is. However, Schumacher never won a championship with a strong teammate and Senna never won a championship with a different car. Is it a prerequisite that a driver needs to do either one of the above to show how good they are? Cant it be possible that they show that with just what they got? The reason why Fernando is considered the best is because he does his best with what he got. How should Sebastian be different?

Vettel wins 13 races, 16 podiums, 9 pole positions, 7 fastest laps and completely dominates his teammate.
Yes he might have the best car but doubt anyone would have gotten better results in that car than Vettel considering he has made the least mistakes of anyone this year.
Yet 29% of people still feel he doesn’t deserve driver of the year. I see votes for Webber, Massa, Chilton, Bianchi, Gutierrez and Sutil.
Guess I am still to be shocked he got 71% of the votes considering he only got 6 DotW trophies.

I get that, but no online opinion poll will ever read “100%”. You’ll have some votes for someone else who did well to at least reflect who was 2nd or 3rd best (like Hulkenberg for example). Still a majority voted for Vettel. And if 1 or 2 people, the smallest of minorities vote for someone like Chilton, then they’re clearly not serious, and not really affecting the end result, so who really cares about them?

This is for the driver of the year, so I tried to take cars, teams, mid-season tyre changes and “luck” out of it … the result: Alonso who “got the best out of what was available” more consistently than any other. I couldn’t see any other way of “judging” driver quality. (Not to take away from Vettel who fully deserved his WDC title.)

If you take all the factors out like you said there are 2 key measurement
1) Team mate battle: Vettel was far more dominant over Webber than Alonso was over Massa.
2) Driver mistakes: Alonso made more mistakes than Vettel did

Vettel but Kimi is close second. Until the ******** that started happening after Korea he got good stable results and did some cracking drives like Australia, Bahrain, Germany and Singapore. Some fantastic overtakes too.

Since I see Vettel winning this pole with ease (fair and square I should add). I’m going to vote for Rosberg since this season proves that he still is probably the most underrated driver in the sport (2 race wins, regular points, almost matched Hamilton in quali (who is seen as the best quali driver), had fair share of bad luck and not fair team “tactics”). And as far as I can see my vote gave him whole 1% of total votes which also confirms how underrated and unseen he is by f1 fans.

Where was Vettel in the first half of the season when his car couldnâ€™t manage the tires?

Apparently he was racing and finishing in the top 4!! I am not sure if you were sarcastic as @david-a mentioned or if you were frustrated with FIA but Vettel was able to manage his tyres better that most in the 1 half of the season as well. He never finished less than 4th, had three wins, 5 podiums, only retired from the lead in the British GP due to mechanical problems before the tyre changes. Compared to others, he already had a dominant car in the begining of the season. Its just that in the later part of the season, that fact became more obvious.

I don’t know how anybody could not vote for Vettel. He was incredible this year. My only slight worry is that Red Bull is taking the same pragmatic approach as Ferrari did with Schumacher by not giving Vettel a team mate who can challenge him. It is a shame really.

Alonso had a good car, certainly at start of the year let’s not make it like Alonso finished 2nd in a Sauber or Force India. Needless to point out the multiple driver errors by Alonso in 2013 nor the fact that he often failed to out qualifying Massa.
Luck is something Alonso never ever has to complaint about, he has been more fortunate in last years when it comes to reliability or misfortune of drivers ahead of him, not to mention a teammate forced to move over, take penalties and likely have inferior equipment.
Add to that his poor behaviour in the media complaining/whining and not supporting his own team and all I can conclude that certainly compared to 2012 Alonso had a pretty mediocre year and certainly not to be called impressive.

He’ll only get better, he is still very young. His fourth title means he now has earned a title in more than half of the seasons he entered. Equalling Schumachers record of most wins in a season and killing his wins in a row streak only shows what pace Red Bull and Sebastian had this year. I thought 2011 was the best we would ever see from the Austrian squad but was I wrong. It makes me think the best is yet to come.